


The Long Slog

by FowlProse



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Depression, Ghosts, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Magical Realism, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, World War II, family by choice, slight body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 05:28:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11075001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FowlProse/pseuds/FowlProse
Summary: Sometimes you can’t make the sacrifices you’d like to. Sometimes you have to live with that - with the fact that somewhere out there, someone is taking the hit that you wanna take.And sometimes you get slowly driven insane by an apparition representing every regret you have.





	The Long Slog

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Long Slog -- art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11076843) by [moblit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moblit/pseuds/moblit). 



> This story was written for the 2017 Cap RBB, inspired by the gorgeous art created by [steve-rogers](http://steve-rogers.tumblr.com/). They were wonderful to work with. : )
> 
> Beta work done by the incredible [superheroresin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/superheroresin), who saved me when I was panicking. Any mistakes and errors are my own.
> 
> The handful of footnotes are entirely optional and are generally just extra flavor that didn't work in the story proper - if you like random digressions into 1940s NY art scene, random history tidbits as seen through the perspectives of Steve or Bucky, or just emotional asides, you might be into them.
> 
> \- Fowly

 

* * *

 

His work with the WPA dries up in February of ’43, the FAP is closing officially in June.[1]

The last 4F he gets is in June.

Winifred brings the telegram over in December.

~ ~ ~

The coal scandal means that nothing fucking burns, and beyond that, no one can even get the shipments off the New Jersey shores over to Brooklyn.[2] It’s cold, and he focuses on the commission from Martin’s and tries not to think about how he’s probably only got this job because the guy who’d normally be lovingly defining the hairs on this “fox” coat ad is probably off getting shot at. Tries not to think about who in Brooklyn could actually afford three hundred bucks of fur right now.

What he _does_ think of is how it would feel, wearing a fancy fur coat in his coal-less apartment, with a glass of something cheap in his hand as he freezes his appendages off in style. He thinks he gets it - wanting something nice when everything’s falling to pieces.

After Martin’s, he’ll have the grocery ad, then the Pulp cover the studio wanted, then the work for Coronet Magazine -

The world’s gone to Hell. He’s never had so much work.

~ ~ ~

It happens so fast. Maggie’s there inviting him over, telling him about the telegram, and then the weekend turns into a blur. He’s only half certain he locked his apartment when he left, laden with dishes full of food.

It’s not a funeral.

The telegram said he was MIA.

But their faces are pretty grim when they all gather together the Saturday after Winifred got it.

Becca crosses over from New Jersey with Irene; stops being Mrs. Proctor and starts being a Barnes girl somewhere on the ferry. Anne stays a couple nights at her parents instead of the boarding house, tries hard to be smiling and pleasant about the whole thing - the way she smiles when the chips are down reminds Steve of Bucky, and the feeling is overwhelming. Maggie, the only one still living with Winifred and George, just creeps along the edges of the greetings and catch-up, wringing her hands and watching the brick wall of the building opposite, through the back window.

Becca’s girl is three and there’s no way she’s ever gonna remember Bucky beyond a hazy figure conflated with all the other men who’ve lifted her high in the air and made noises about how big she’s gotten. She spends the entire weekend being dandled on a revolving series of knees, the one giggling point amongst all the somber mugs (even Anne’s chipper attitude sags as the hours go on).

There’s a painful amount of food, courtesy of Winifred and Steve - he’d tried for grateful guest and ended up somewhere closer to a grocer dropping off a shipment.

George leaves every evening, and Steve feels guilty for how much easier it feels without him. How Maggie’s back eases a bit. How the conversation goes smoother.

He’d seen the same stiffness in Bucky’s back for years, every time he’d talked to his father. Steve, too removed from the idea of being beholden to a father, could only understand theoretically the complex relationships all the Barnes kids had with their father. From the outside, he could feel pity for the strange guy who’d apparently never been right after the Great War. He could feel sorrow for the man who’d never learned to talk to his family.

Still, close as he is to things, it’s hard not to be happy for the girls when George isn’t there to be the austere figure they all try futilely to impress.

~ ~ ~

It’s gotta be after 4am and Steve is still more than a little crocked, barely sobered up at all. After hours of talking - none of which had ever skewed close to being discussions about what would happen if Bucky was seriously gone for good - and more than his fair share of drinking, he’d lain down in Bucky’s old bed. The springs had creaked as he flopped and flipped and flopped and… by the time birds start chirping outside, he’s decided to get up. He stands up, blacks out a little from standing up too fast, and finds himself sitting on his ass by the bed. He leans his forehead against the mattress, feels the heaviness of his body and the creak of his bones as he leans. Feels himself slip down until he’s lying on the cold wood floor. The old union suit borrowed from George is baggy, and when the back of it gets trapped awkwardly under his side, the front of the collar practically garrotes him.

Steve hefts out a sigh, feeling like the old, morose bloodhound that sits outside his apartment buildings most balmy days. He rolls under Bucky’s bed, staring up at the place where he knows the box springs would be staring back at him, rusty and familiar, if only there was a bit of light.

He realizes he must have made a thump when the door swings squeakily open and someone walks in. He debates scrambling to get out from under Bucky’s bed, but is suddenly certain he’d either beam his forehead right on something metal and painful in the process, or possibly just start crying.

(He’s been worried about spontaneous crying for a while now and the fact that it still hasn’t come is almost annoying him with anticipation.)

The door shuts. Floorboards creak, the steps pause. Whoever it is kneels by the bed, blocking the small amount of predawn light that’s begun to trickle through the window. A second later, someone is squirming in underneath the bed, cursing quietly as they get caught up for a moment, trying to get their ribcage through.

“How the hell did you fit in here so easily?” Maggie grumbles, joining him in staring up at the springs.

“I’m scrawny,” Steve says, trying not to let a bit of bitterness creep in, head swimming. He’s a little irritated that he’s slurring very slightly while Maggie sounds so clear, despite the fact that she’d drunk _at least_ as much as him. He supposes she’s got more practice trying to keep up with Ma Barnes, though.

Maggie huffs in faux-annoyance, elbows him lightly in the ribcage.

Being here, laying under this bed, being elbowed by a teenage Barnes - it’s all painfully familiar. Steve finds himself letting out a quick huff of voiceless laughter.

“What?” Maggie whispers, turning her face towards him. Steve shakes his head. She elbows him and hisses more vehemently, “ _what?_ ”

“Nothin’,” he whispers back. “I just…used to do this a lot. With Buck.”

“Why the Hell would you -“ Maggie starts, but interrupts herself by starting to laugh. The puffs of laughter hit his cheek. He finds himself chuckling, too.

The door creaks open.

The two of them fall silent. Suddenly kids again, trying not to get caught.

Maggie lets out a giggle.

“What the Hell are you two doing?” Winifred’s voice is the perfect combination of exasperated and fond to hit Steve’s memories hard. Even when finding her daughter and her son’s weird friend with their legs sticking out from under her son’s old bed at half past too-early in the morning, she sounds lively and on top of things.

(No matter how long he’s known the Barnes, sometimes there’s a frisson of fear that goes down his spine. Makes him think suddenly the Barneses will realize he’s a deadbeat, or that he shouldn’t associate with them. That he’s not good enough to be left alone with their girls.)

But not since the day he first met Winifred has she ever treated him with anything but kindness. Not since she invited him into her home after his ma died has she ever treated him like a burden. It always hurts, that kind of kindness the Barneses are so good at, makes him angry at himself for wanting it and needing it.

(Shit, there’s the spontaneous tears. He breathes slowly and hopes Maggie doesn’t notice.)

“Nothing!” Maggie cries out, stemmed laughter obvious in her tone.

There’s a wooden thump, and when Steve twists just so, he can see Winifred past his feet, sitting slumped against the doorway. She’s shaking and she’s got her hands running over her face.

A moment later she starts laughing.

Maggie’s contained giggles burst out.

A moment later Winifred’s laughter starts being mixed in with sobs.

“Ah, shit, ma -“ Maggie is thrashing, trying to squirm back out. Steve takes the other route and pulls himself out the other side of the bed, giving himself a hell of a lot of bruises in the mad scramble.

When he peeks back over the edge of the bed, Maggie is crouched by her mother, rubbing her back. Winifred is still laughing and crying. She looks up at Steve over the sleeve she’s dabbing her face with.

“I used to see you two - you and Bucky- you’d always be under there with matches, trying to read comics and all sorts of things Bucky thought I’d care enough to disapprove of. I told you both you’d burn the building down.” She’s babbling, a stream of words through the hitches of her breath. “And you would always cough like you were gonna _die_ because of the smoke,” there’s something humored in her voice, along with the age-old argument creeping in with irritation, “and I told you both a _thousand_ times not to, but you wouldn’t listen. I thought that boy was gonna kill you. So many times, God, so many -” she’s shaking her head.

He walks around the bed, but has no clue what to do with himself. His hands feel strange at his side as he stands above the two. He’s not sure if it would be okay to reach out or -

Maggie reaches out and tugs him down and he hugs Winifred and feels his own tears welling up real bad.

They cling together until Anne comes in and makes loud, sleep-heavy noises about how they’re leaving her out. Until Becca comes in with a smile that hurts Steve with the familiarity, bearing mugs of hot tea.

~ ~ ~

Steve walks away from the Barneses’ on Monday morning with a pounding in his head, and a tightness in his throat. A part of him wonders if he’s ever gonna have the strength to go back.

To look Winifred or the girls or even George in the eye, knowing it should have been him. At best, he’s a consolation prize for a lost son and brother, and at worst he’s a hateful reminder of a dead loved one.

~ ~ ~

His world has become very small.

He goes to the studio and various ad offices spread throughout the city to pick up work.[3] He sits hunched over his desk as he works. Revises, revises.

He pretends that when he attends protests and writes strongly worded letters about the coal crisis or the internment camps on the West Coast that it means anything - that it proves he still has something left rattling around inside him, driving him on.

The truth is that he wasn’t prepared for Bucky leaving a year ago, and that now that he’s really gone, there’s just -

The truth is that Steve has always thought he was the kind of person who could do it all on his own, had always hated the way Bucky kept at him, making him feel like he wasn’t good enough to sort himself out without help -

It’s a shameful, guilty kind of hurt to realize Bucky was right.

It burns, that after years of telling him he could make it on his own, that this is the truth of Steve: an idiot unable to do more than the motions without someone else to help him through.

Steve spits out another commission. He makes another deadline by the skin of his teeth. He takes one on the chin at a demonstration.

He eats, he sleeps.

He knows he’s nothing special for the way he can’t live a day without feeling aimless dread, heavy over him - everyone’s feeling it right now. He’d be a damned idiot not to. But there’s something that drives pins in his spine, sets his teeth on edge - it feels different from the way that he’d set himself to determination and moving forward after his ma’s death, different from the way he’s always felt ready for whatever came his way.

He’s always been able to keep calm in the wake of anything that happened. He’d never known it was ‘cause of Bucky. And fuck, doesn’t that make him maudlin? Feelin’ sorry for himself while his best friend is dead on another continent.

He sits at his desk and he feels his spine ache and his skin crawl.

He sleeps, he eats. He takes a breath.

~ ~ ~

It’s getting to be -

Look, it’s not that he’s never had those ‘moments’, the way his ma used to call it when her brain skipped the groove. Everyone has them. You walk back up a few flights to check that you actually did lock the door; you forget a pot on the stove until there’s nothing but a layer of mineral burning in the bottom; you leave a pen somewhere you can’t find it even after searching for hours.

This isn’t that. Or - it is, but it’s not the same.

Steve feels like he’s going crazy.

He stands up after several hours of work, and he would _swear_ he’d left his dishes from lunch on the counter, not in the sink.

He keeps finding his pens scattered around the apartment, no matter how many times he puts them back in the mug on his desk - even when he hasn’t even used one of the damn things.

He knows he’s _not_ really, but… he hears things, sometimes. The creak of someone’s weight on the floorboards, the huff of the armchair settling under weight.

He hears voices, and he knows it’s the neighbors - he _knows_ , alright?

It’s just - it’s just that it sounds so close.

Like someone in the room.

A whisper by his ear keeps making him turn over his shoulder, heart pounding.

It’s stupid.

He’s just not getting a lot of sleep, is all.

~ ~ ~

The new year turns, and it’s been a couple months since the telegram. Every time he thinks of it, he feels a knee-jerk reaction of denial. That it couldn’t have really been so long, already. But the days keep going, and every time the thought comes, it’s just as fresh as it was and it stings just as bad.

He keeps going.

~ ~ ~

Here’s Bucky Barnes. The feeling of cold, cold air on his face as his sweat sticks him to the operating table. The panic that doesn’t ever end, that will creep on him ever after - after his bones are gone, and the rest of him’s lost to the fire.

This is an hour before his heart stops entirely. This is two hours before Dernier sets off the explosives they’d stolen from the factory back before the bastards dragged Barnes off, days ago. This is two hours before Morita feels ice and satisfaction in the back of his throat when he stomps down on the neck of a man who’d almost had him a second ago, now prone on the ground - knocked down by shrapnel, Jim is gonna think.

It’s November, and a Nazi prison camp goes up in flames. The remainder of the 107th make it back to allied territory - some families will get a second batch of letters, rescinding the first info. There weren’t many dry eyes about the first batch, and there won’t be a lot of them about the second one, either. But they’ll be a lot happier circumstances, yeah?

The Barneses will only ever get that first letter.

~ ~ ~

Bucky dies on that table in the camp. And that’s when everything starts.

This ain’t about souls, not really, not about immortal pieces of you chipped away off the meat block. This is about being and not being.

This is about existing.

Bucky Barnes stops existing on that table. Something else continues to go on. That something goes on and on. It waivers over snow and mud and feels the small pieces and nooks and crannies of familiar things. It’s the hairs rising on Jim Morita’s neck as he stomps hard with his boot on the back of one of his jailer’s neck, the day Dernier sets off the distraction and they get out of there. It’s dipping into the space behind the peeling paint on a canteen that used to belong to someone in the 107th, now tossed aside for the elements to have.

For that something else to have, for just that moment.

It feels its way out over the cold and the wet and when it remembers how wind works, it’s buffeted by it. It clings to the tense area on the surface of the waves, hides in their valleys.

It took Bucky Barnes three weeks to cross the Atlantic the first time. Later, he’ll have no idea how long it took the second time. No concept of it. There will be clues, though. The first time he finds New York, he feels part of himself recognize it. Part of him knows the way he used to feel things, smell them, see them. He recognizes more until suddenly one day he’s not perceiving the actuality of their existence, he’s perceiving them the way he used to. Walls have a texture not because he knows they do, but because he can see them, can feel them like he used to be able to scrape his fingertips over rough brick and -

He finds the people shortly after he starts recognizing New York. Or rather, he realizes the thing that’s been drawing him on and on. The woman with calloused hands, with the scowl and the strength to her spine, the small girl in her arms. The woman in the boarding house with the viciously bright smile, and the fingers typing away rabbit quick on the typewriter. The quiet girl hovering the edges of the home of the steady, steely woman, and the taciturn man who keeps looking to a far point he can’t discern.

And then there’s _him_ . The one who dips in and out of the lives of the others, same as they all do. But where the others make him want to curl around their necks, make their tears stop, make things easier - _he_ makes him want to DO something. The guy’s never the same thing everyday with small variations, the way everything else feels - he’s something new, always. The something feels itself stretch along the man - _Steve_ \- the way he moves. Wants to know every click of bone, every shudder in his lung, every twitch at the corner of his mouth. It lays itself along his hand when he draws, feels the vibration of the pencil tip against the paper as it moves - and this is how he remembers what it is to have hands. He learns to feel the tension of the typewriter keys under Anne’s quick fingers, the daily chores of Becca. He learns the tension of thread under Maggie’s fingers. Dishes - everyone does them, and everyone does them _differently_. He learns how water interacts with skin again.

He remembers _having_ skin.

He remembers being like them.

~ ~ ~

He doesn’t always remember who he is, if he’s entirely honest. He knows Steve - knows him easily. No matter if he still thinks he’s over there or not - he _knows_ Steve. Sometimes he feels the panic rise in him, and he thinks that if Steve doesn’t shut the fuck up and hunker down, the krauts are gonna get him and -

The worst is not remembering what he _is_ now, though. He’ll rest comfortable in the apartment, while Steve is scritching away. The familiarity is perfection - there’s nothing else he’s found that makes him feel that lazy happiness rising up. Just him, forgetting to worry about remembering and just _being_ . And Steve will make a disparaging grunt at something on the radio, and Bucky will feel the reflection of a smile, and he’ll go to razz Steve over what’s eating him _this_ time and -

It’s not the gaping silence where Steve doesn’t respond, still scowling at his latest commission while listening to the damned wireless. _That_ moment just has Bucky a little offended - it’s not like Steve’s never ignored him, after all. But the moments after he starts calling louder, the moments when he calls so loud the _neighbors_ should be telling him to shut up, the moment when he realizes Steve _can’t_ hear him -

It’s not great.

Bucky isn’t sure what to do with himself, but at least there’s Steve to focus on - to distract him from the deep panic with all these easy, comfortable memories to fall into.

The same way he has to learn to see the way he used to, to stop feeling the existence of things as truths and try to look at them the way he had to when he was - well, before, he learns how to feel boundaries the way his old body used to.

After the operating table and the cold and the sweat and the fire, he had huddled against the wind on the sea, the way he’d known it could move him - but it hadn’t been a body. There hadn’t been hands clutching the waves, clawing against things, slipping beneath the surface and fighting the current. He’d been….something else. Just aware enough to know things SHOULD be able to move him, but not able to conceptualize exactly what parts of him would be moved by said things.

There are things that just - catch on his memories, sort of. The way he can almost remember how it goes when he smiles at something Steve said. Or, knowing he should be tutting or crossing his arms when Becca curses in front of the kid (Irene, _Irene_ ) - can feel the idea of having a quirk in his lip betraying his laughter, knowing their ma was just as bad about it, with them.

But it’s one step away from the actual memory of how these things would go. Like tracing pencils over the imprint in a pad of paper, left from a heavy handed note on the top sheet.

These little snags are frustrating as _Hell_ , the more he remembers. The shape of his own body, the way a brick wall felt with his fingertips, the smell of oatmeal - it’s all tugging at him, like a word caught on the tip of his tongue.

Whatever these moments of half-shod memory are, they’re made worse by the way he catches on other people's _present_ . On the days he feels thin and weightless, the days he forgets whose apartment he’s in and wanders away, days he stares at Anne in her fancy office and wonders _who she is_ \- sometimes on these days, he feels himself slipping on other people’s… thoughts? Brushing up against Anne’s irritation at her boss, _her_ fingertips on the keys; the guy he passes on the street whose back is aching, and whose shoes are crushing his toes, who’s worrying about his brother and  -

It’s uncomfortable, is what it is. And Bucky shies from it.

Except when it draws him in.

The days he hovers lonesome and wanting over Steve’s shoulder as Steve viciously hunches over a rapidly moving pencil, the days he hears the echoes of the scratch on paper and it’s almost like something he’s heard a thousand times - except he’s not really hearing it, is he? Sometimes on those days, he’ll take his right hand and let it align itself with Steve’s. The feelings aren’t the same - Steve doesn’t hold his pencil like Bucky, his fingers are shaped different, and that’s just the nerves and the muscles and the bones he’s using to feel the movement. Hell, the pencil lead is so much softer than the ones Bucky used for writing, but at least that shock is _familiar_ . Using Steve’s art pencils is something he’s _done_ before.

Catching on the present is easier when he _decides_ to do it. When he decides to stroke his niece’s hair off her forehead with Becca’s hand - or rests his head on a pillow with Maggie’s cheek, letting himself feel that slow, sluggish creeping and trying to remember what it was to sleep. Mostly, he just spends long hours with Steve, drawing together, letting Steve work and letting himself feel things. Remember what it was to have a hand - even one that cramped and had to be shaken out after an hour or so. Sometimes even remembering how it felt to sit, tense and intent on something.

At first, it’s just good to _feel_ . To _really_ feel - not just remember the memory of it. But the more he lets himself indulge, the more Bucky starts remembering how it was to have a body. Letting himself catch on Steve’s day to day, he starts being able to pick apart the differences between the way Steve exists, and the way _he_ had.

It’s strange to realize that when he brushes up against Steve’s table with his hip, he’s not just feeling the distant memory anymore. He’s feeling it _right now_ . Or, the way his body _would_ have felt it, at any rate.

More and more, he stops needing other people to sense things. Starts being able to think of his own form, being able to sense things - not just knowing their existence the way he had, but having a sensation as if -

It’s not like he’s alive. He knows that. He _knows_ that, okay? But. It’s easier to pretend, sometimes.

And harder, too - it’s harder to just relax into the idea of a memory and ignore the inconsistencies. Harder to get swept up in the hazy radio serial script version of what he should be feeling and doing when he cements himself in like that.

Bucky starts being able to focus himself - _be_ himself - for more than a couple minutes.

The more he starts feeling, the more he starts _thinking_. Starts worrying about Steve when he forgets to eat; wishing he could tell his da off for being severe to Maggie for something stupid; wishing he could give Becca and Anne just a day to _stop_ , to rest.

And the thing is: it’s not real great.

It’s harder to ignore that he’s removed. Harder to snap out of a hazy sideways memory of Italy and mud and blisters on every damn part of him, only to feel himself, steady and whole, in Steve’s apartment. Unable to turn Steve around by the shoulder, tug him away from everything else, unable to hug him the way he wants. Unable to go cry in his ma’s lap like a fucking kid.

He feels his hand, calloused like it was in Azzano for the moment. He sets it on Steve’s shoulder and grounds himself, rubs his thumb over the nape of his neck and wishes he’d just _look_.

He feels his hand, unlined and soft, like it was when he had that cushy accountancy job at the yard. He traces the tense bridge of Steve’s nose as he sleeps, and wonders what the fuck he’s doing.

He’s not a person, not really. So why is he still here?

~ ~ ~

It’s easier to remember around Steve, somehow. Easier to know who he is - who he was.

Sometimes he goes - not just to his family, but _anywhere_ . Sick of feeling stuck with himself and his lack of options. But the days he wanders off, he finds himself drifting so easily, and as soon as he remembers himself, he’s snapped into the realization that he might _lose_ himself like that. For good.

He stays by Steve, because through some combination of interest, worry, irritation, and fondness, it’s easier to keep himself _there_.

~ ~ ~

He lets himself feel Steve’s pencil under their hands as he works, he lets himself have this.

And one day, when Steve’s hand is cramping and he’s been working for hours and it’s not even _exciting_ being able to feel this, anymore -

Bucky shakes his hand out and Steve stops. Looks down in confusion at where the pencil’s just been flung from his hand with Bucky’s idle gesture. Where Bucky had moved Steve’s hand.

And Bucky’s heart-that-can’t-be-real begins to _pound_.

~ ~ ~

For a short while, Bucky finds himself catching on Steve and _changing_ things. When Steve wants to keep working until late in the night, Bucky edges him towards going to bed. When Steve would normally walk down the street on errands, lost in his own thoughts, Bucky finds himself tilting smiles to passing strangers.

It’s so _easy_ to just ride along with Steve.

The problem is the moment of confusion and slight paranoia Steve feels sometimes when he’s been edged towards something else. Bucky feels kinda filthy every time it happens, so he stops letting himself do it so much.

Still, as if just by giving himself these small choices he’s flipped a switch, he starts finding himself able to adjust small things - even when he’s not riding along.

He’s sitting silent and speculative beside Steve’s sleeping body one night. He reaches out like he has a thousand times, just wanting to feel, and his fingers manage to _move_ Steve’s hair out of his face.

And _that_ gives him a new goal.

~ ~ ~

It starts with small things. Pencils - Bucky _loves_ ‘em. Has damn near been practicing with them lately, what with how much time he’s been spending holding hands with Steve over the damn things.

So when Steve’s back is turned, instead of getting mad, instead of calling futilely, screaming like he wants to, sometimes - Bucky _does_ practice moving the pencil.

There are grandiose ideas swimming in his head of writing Steve letters from beyond the grave - of what he could _do_ if he masters this.

It’s not easy, but that’s never stopped him. He learns how to pry the tip up a couple millimeters before losing his grip. Sets himself to it with the dogged patience he’d used when he’d been put through basic, and then sniper training. Scowls, frowns - feels the pounding of a tension headache when he remembers that he should, as unhelpful as that memory is.

And eventually, Bucky learns to lift pencils.

…It uh, maybe goes a little farther than he should have let it. In his glee at being able to lift the damn things - not with the fine movements necessary to write with, but _getting_ there - he takes to shifting them around Steve’s apartment.

He _does_ get that Steve’s not real, uh, pleased by the whole thing. He gets it. It’s just - even that small moment of bewildered expression when Steve picks his tools up and puts them back in the mug on his desk is enough to make Bucky feel more _real_ . Feel like there’s maybe something he can actually _do_ here.

He starts trying to talk to Steve, thinks maybe - maybe if he can touch things, move them - maybe he could -

Steve doesn’t seem to hear shit, though.

So Bucky starts trying to touch _him_ . Shake his shoulder, tug his sleeve, get him to just _pay attention_ already. Steve doesn’t turn, doesn’t pay him any mind. Most days, it feels like he can only really catch a few strands of the material, anyway.

The first letter he writes is about three shaky letters long. He’d worked for an hour on it, so he’s pretty disappointed when Steve barely glances at the ‘HEY’ scribbled on his open sketchbook before turning to a fresh page.

~ ~ ~

The first time Bucky makes something _real_ happen, it’s not to Steve at all.

Though, it is _for_ Steve. Kinda.

He hates it. Hates seeing Steve, bloody and bruised. This is part of why he starts following Steve more than his family. He can tell they’re mostly alright, not _great_ but not in any mortal kinda trouble - but Steve is so isolated, and so damned _often_ in trouble. But he hasn’t been able to do shit, hasn’t been able to stop anything - just yell and rail at whatever moron is messing up _his_ moron.

This time, he can feel the way Steve’s cheek bruises - can feel capillaries burst, swelling of flesh, the way nerves and blood rush, the way his head glances off the wall behind him, scraping against the rough brick, leaving red in his hair, on the wall -

Bucky doesn’t think, just reaches out, less formed body than force - feels the way the guys face exists, feels the way blood moves.

And just like Steve’s cheek, he makes things burst.

Makes them swell.

(Steve is on the ground, but when he manages to roll onto his back, he can blearily see the man clutching his nose and yowling, blood dripping down his chin.)

If something cracked a little, Bucky isn’t worried. The kind of guy that takes the kind of guy Steve is and pummels him in an alley? Deserves a crooked nose. He’s surprised by how familiar and true that thought feels, the way loving his family or Steve is.

A truth, an old memory, a frequent habit.

~ ~ ~

Steve gets in a fight with some poor eighteen year old army boy from the Midwest, hopped up on fear and excitement from being in the big city. The other soldiers he came in with just roll their eyes and keep drinking when the kid drags Steve out around back.

(Steve ain’t saying that this is how _every_ night out ends, but he will say that this never would have happened if he hadn’t taken his coworker up on his offer for a drink. He’s poor company these days, anyway. He should have known better. )

It’s practically old hat. Getting pushed out of the way by some drunken kid with too much bravado on his way to the toilet. Opening his big mouth and asking for an apology from someone who was obviously spoiling for a fight as much as Steve. Getting dragged out to an alley to get punched into grimy brickwork and try to avoid landing face first in trash.

He’s as shocked as anyone when his head clears from a heavy blow, and the kid’s on the ground sobbing.

He almost wishes he could be the kinda guy to say something smart and stalk off. But, he isn’t. And the kid’s wailing. He has to bat the kid’s hands away to get at his face, make sure nothing serious is wrong, gives him a handkerchief to hold to his bloody nose (just uses his sleeve for his own).  He has to stagger off, make sure to find the guys’ friends so they can get him back safe. Tell them to tell their commanding officer it was just a misstep on a curb, if they don’t want him getting in trouble. Christ, he may think the kid’s an ass, but he gets it. Knows that he’s gotta be terrified right now, so close to shipping off.

On a different day, without the pressure in his face driving him to distraction, maybe he would have noticed how pristine his knuckles were. The lack of bruising, the lack of - anything.

That night, he just passes out wishing he’d remembered to tell his coworker he was heading out, hoping the guy didn’t go looking for him. Morosely glad that he was fairly certain the guy _wouldn’t_ , that the last person who would’ve went missing in November and -

~ ~ ~

Steve goes home, and he’s quiet as he runs the bloodied sleeve of his jacket under the tap.

Bucky is _elated_ . He loses himself a little on Steve’s trip home, loses the thread of things, the sequence. But that doesn’t matter, not really - ‘cause this _means_ something.

Means maybe he can do more than hide pencils and mope around.

He sets himself so doggedly to getting Steve to pay attention when he can remember himself enough to, that at first he doesn’t realize what he’s doing to Steve.

(That’s bullshit, and a part of him knows he was just ignoring the signs because he can’t bring himself to stop, not when he could actually maybe _talk_ to someone. )

Steve starts getting a little… Agitated. He swipes at his hair and neck nervously when Bucky is trying determinedly to tug at his ear, he wakes up in the middle of the night when Bucky is speaking idly to himself. He jumps at the sound of rats in the walls, drops a dish in the kitchen - Steve rubs at his forehead and temples as he sweeps up the mess, and Bucky can’t even feel good about it, about knowing he’s been _noticed_ , because Steve’s not even responding to _him_ anymore.

Bucky sits on the side of Steve’s bed and brushes the hair from his forehead, grubby with graphite from where he’s been massaging his head. Steve wakes up gasping.

Steve starts waking up gasping _a lot_ \- not in the asthma kinda way, like he sometimes does.

And he starts, uh, crying in his sleep.

Bucky stops touching him so much, after that.

He can’t stop himself from talking, though, can’t stop wanting Steve to just _listen_ already. And maybe he hates himself for that or maybe he doesn’t, but he keeps doing it, doesn’t he?

He misses him so much. It feels like in one big rush it’s hit him - he’s never gonna get to ask Steve questions again. Never going to know more. Steve lives in his head all the damn time, and Bucky used to love prying it out of him. Asking when Steve went quiet and started frowning. Pestering him until Steve would burst forth with hours of conversation - now, it feels like he’s picking at scraps.

(He knows he should be missing other things. Knows he should miss dancing, and work, and being a guy with lots of prospects - but all he can really think about is how nice it would feel to sit down with Steve and ask him what’s going on in his head. And the fact that he _can’t_ \- )

All he can do now is drive Steve insane, it seems. Or feel emotions second-hand he was never meant to pry at. It pops his bubble pretty hard. What, he’s gonna write some fucking letter all so Steve can get even more upset?

Maybe it would’ve been better if he hadn’t clung so hard. Maybe it would have been better to wander off and forget himself entirely.

~ ~ ~

Here’s the thing. Pencils are all well and fine.

The moment he’d started being able to affect things, started being able to write small things, he’d gone to Becca. Away from Steve, it’s harder to keep focus - to keep his touch and himself and everything else.

He just thought he’d double his efforts. Be able to make some tiny change, at least.

The small losses of himself - picking up the same pencil twenty times only to drift off and find himself in an empty apartment with art supplies scattered everywhere, an ache in his legs telling him to run - those weren’t _scary_.

Picking up a knife in the kitchen of Becca’s new place to try to help clean up a little, thinking he’ll run it under the faucet, losing himself, and finding himself tiredly cutting jagged tally marks on the wall in the sitting room, only a room away from his own sleeping _niece_? A little more fucking scary.

He’d stopped trying to check on the girls so much, after that.

~ ~ ~

He doesn’t have a lot of options left to him, these days.

So when Steve leaves pots in the sink to soak, he’ll reach in and pick at the bits of tarnish or crusted food with a precision he knows he wouldn’t have if he was focusing on having _real_ hands right now.

Or he feels the turmoil in Steve’s dreams, and reaches out to the panic emanating from him, feels it in himself - and tries to just take some slow breaths. Let the feeling go.

He takes the changes he can make, and he tries to make something of them. A goal, a task, a mission, a life.

If the rest of his life is going to be spent playing at helpful shoe elf for Steve, he’s gonna at least be _good_ at it.

~ ~ ~

There are times when he worries, and times when he thinks maybe he should just - go. He’s not sure where, or how, or what, but he could try, couldn’t he?

He kind of suspects it wouldn’t work, to be honest.

No matter how many times he loses himself, Bucky always finds himself back here. Sometimes he wakes up from… wherever his mind’s been in those hours when he loses track of things and he’s at one of the girls’ places, or his parents, or walking a street as familiar as his old room.

But most of the time, he’s wherever Steve is. He’s pretty sure no matter what, for better or worse, he’s gonna keep winding up here.

And it’s becoming easier. Making himself - well, there. Touching things, affecting them. The pigeons on the roof watch him with bobbing heads as he crosses their paths. The neighbor’s cat came up to him for a pet in the hallway, yesterday.

Every step forward gives him a little more hope - and a little more dread, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He follows Steve on his errands most days. Feels smug when he trips the tough guy who tries to grab Steve’s collar at some demonstration Bucky can’t quite focus enough on that day to understand. Something about ferries and rubbish in a shipment or - ehh, it’s more important that Steve had been speaking loudly (one step up away from speaking on a soapbox, probably), and that guy’s hand had shot out, and his voice had started to shoot out all booming and threatening like, and Bucky’s _foot_ had shot out, and tough guy had gone down like a sack of bricks and Steve had barely noticed.

Bucky is all about priorities. He’s a real man of strategy, alright?

So he affects the little things.

Straightens Steve’s collar. Gets Steve out of the dumb situations he gets himself into. Sets out the bandages on the table when he’s quick enough, and Steve’s too busy holding his bloody nose to figure it out. Spends a lot of effort getting a dish done here and there, or tries to at least get them to the sink, failing that.

He tries so hard to be _there_ that he almost doesn’t realize when he _is_. He’s walking by Steve’s side, hands in pockets that only exist because he remembers them to exist. And then some yard worker with a healthy, boozy flush to his cheeks bumps into Bucky, turns and says, “‘scuse me, sir,” to Steve.

And Steve is saying, “oh, you didn’t - “

Bucky is rolling his eyes, and in a moment of habit, looks over to share the ridiculous moment with Steve.

Steve’s eyes glance over him, pause, and then he’s turning forward again.

It’s in the moment of lingering, when Steve’s eyes meet his own, and Bucky feels elation and Steve’s brow starts furrowing and, and - Bucky feels his strings _cut_ when Steve turns forward.

And Bucky suddenly realizes that Steve is a real fuckin’ _shit_.

And whatever guilt he’d been feeling, whatever cautiousness he’d employed to try not to drive Steve insane, is wiped away in a moment of injured indignation.

Steve’s been ignoring him on _purpose,_ the bastard.

~ ~ ~

He’s going insane.

He’s _actually_ going insane. Not in the trite, sweet way someone might call themselves ‘mad’ for a couple innocent mistakes.

Steve goes from feeling like a live wire every day and night, to, to - _seeing_ things.

He’ll wake up, and in the corner of the room is Bucky, in - well, not the dress uniform Steve had seen him in after he’d come back from basic on his furlough, but. It’s undoubtedly army issued. The grubby shirt, the rough pants tucked into spats at his calves, his tags hanging over the collar of his shirt and coat. And his eyes, his _eyes_ are staring at Steve accusingly over their dark circles as Steve gets up and tries not to hurl all down his fucking front as he readies himself for the day.

Everywhere he goes, no matter what he’s doing - he sees him out of the corner of his eyes, or he feels his breath of laughter on his ear, his hand on his shoulder or -

It takes every ounce of willpower in him not to break down sobbing when he’s halfway through explaining the coal crisis to a coworker at the studio in midtown and he hears an utterly familiar, _painfully_ familiar, voice leaving a sly comment in his ear about New Jersey ferries. He trips up, stammers for a moment, before he gathers himself and continues, trying desperately not to let himself - dwell, or - who fucking knows.

He tries not to let himself be haunted by the gaping hole Bucky’s left, and he’s failing. He’s damn well failing, _badly_.

He can’t sleep without jerking awake, feeling like there is something, _something_ he needs to do. He wishes he knew what, how to set himself or - whatever it _is_ , at ease.

And - _always_ \- Bucky is there. Haunting the corners of every room, hovering at his side. An aching reminder of Steve’s greatest failure, his _privilege_ : to live while the person he loved most died.

Sometimes Bucky looks as he did when they were just dumb kids, spiffy and smartly dressed in a way Steve had never been good at. Or older, even more cleverly outfitted when he’d finally gotten some means to do so. Handsome the way Bucky was _good at_. With his hair shorter, in his dress olives with his Sergeant rank so poignantly on display. And sometimes? Sometimes it’s Bucky in his army kit, the way he must have looked while slogging his way through Europe.

And that hurts worse. Not cause it’s realer than the rest or nothing, but because - he’s so damn tired looking. It hurts because it’s a condensed vision of everything Steve had wanted to be there for, to help. Instead of sitting here in a nice apartment with food and work and _complaining about a fucking coal shortage while people are dying_ -

Steve tries not to think about him, to focus on the things he _can_ do.

But he’s not sure how much longer he _can_ focus on anything else.

~ ~ ~

It’s not the night of the day Bucky realizes it. No, that night he’d spent sulking and glaring at Steve while muttering passive aggressive things that made the hairs on the back of Steve’s neck rise obviously.

It’s a few nights later. Real kindly, he waits ’til Steve finishes his latest job, puts it away in a folder after glaring at it over long-cold tea for a few hours. Waits ’til Steve’s sitting on the couch with his neck craned over the back, sighing grievously.

And then he plops his ass down on the couch next to Steve hard enough to make Steve bounce on the cushion. He tries - and this time, he puts some spiritual elbow grease into it.

“Hey,” he says, trying to be solid and _there_. “Look at me.”

The corner of Steve’s eyes tighten, his eyes twitch slightly before closing.

“Yeah, I fucking _knew_ it,” Bucky hisses through his teeth. “You can hear me. You can _see_ me. I’m not gonna go away, Steve. I’m here. Just _listen_ to me, would ya? Do y’know how long I’ve been _trying_  - “

Steve is rubbing his closed eyes with his hands. Brushing his bangs back. It’s the kind of nervous tell that Bucky’s known long enough to know Steve may be ignoring him, but he’s certainly _hearing_ him.

“Just talk to me, _please -“_

And then Steve is sitting up straight, hands in his lap as he stares determinedly ahead, jaw clenching. Bucky gets up, moves so he’s half crouching directly in Steve’s line of sight.

Steve looks determinedly past Bucky - and Bucky is trying so hard not to just lose himself right now, with how fucking _pissed_ and _helpless_ he feels. He’s afraid his fingers would go right through Steve’s cheeks if he grabbed his face like he wants to and _made_ Steve look at him - afraid he’d go bursting blood vessels like he did to the guy in the alley.

“ _Look at me_ ,” he begs, practically growling as he gets as close as he dares, puts himself in front of Steve.

“Fuck,” Steve says, quietly to himself. “Fuck.”

He’s closing his eyes, holding his right fore and middle fingers to the opposite wrist.

“Stop ignoring me!” Bucky yells, feeling helpless. A neighbor bangs on the wall.

(There are sheets of paper with scrawled drafts of random sites and scenes around town pinned to the wall -  a sketch of a woman leaning down to her dog, the line Steve’d drawn in first of her movement the starkest on the paper; the window over the kitchen sink at Barneses’; Bucky’s shoes, upended with a sock dangling out of one; so on and so on. They flap furiously when Bucky shouts. He barely notices except to again feel a pang of injury at the thought that he might never be able to ask _why_ they were special to Steve. That Steve might go his whole life never explaining it to someone - might toss them, and Bucky would never know about them, no matter how many hours he’s spent looking at them. )

Steve is standing, edging past Bucky’s tense form on the bedside. He’s opening the cabinet he always kept his medical supplies in, taking out the thermometer from the special glass jar his mam had always kept it in - the same dumb thermometer she’d half-stolen from the hospital years ago, with the permission of her boss.

It’s the last straw, when Steve puts it under his tongue, clenching his eyes shut and leaning on the sink, back to Bucky. It’s just - too much.

Bucky finds himself leaning over the counter beside Steve, slapping the glass rod from between his lips, watching Steve’s eyes burst open. The thermometer falls on the counter. There’s a sharp sound when it hits, and the mercury comes seeping across the tile.

“You’re not _sick_ ,” he says, even though Steve’s shaking like maybe he is. Even though he knows he’s not gonna get a response.

“You’re not _real_ ,” Steve snaps back, meeting his eyes firmly this time. The way he hasn’t been, the way he’s been avoiding for days and maybe weeks, Bucky thinks.

It’s the first thing anyone has said to Bucky in a long, long time.

Steve is squaring his jaw and looking right at him.

Bucky isn’t sure he’s ever felt such sudden relief.

Feeling weightless in a good and not at all corporeally deficient way, Bucky reaches over and pinches Steve’s cheek. Hard.

“Ow, fuck off,” Steve mumbles, mouth and voice distorted by Bucky’s grip.

It’s easier to keep the grip right, to not go feeling around inside his blood and flesh, when Steve’s glaring right at him like a real person.

Bucky can feel himself grinning painfully wide.

“You can see me.” Self satisfaction is grand.

Well, until Steve’s face crumples. It’s such a small movement, but Bucky can feel it in his fingers, knows what Steve looks like when he’s trying not to break.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers.

“Wait, no - “ Bucky starts backpedaling, suddenly realizing that maybe showing up as an angry, smug ghost to a guy who’s not sleeping and cooped up by himself all the time is a bit - uh.

Steve’s breathing hard, now. The kind of deep breathes of a guy determined not to let himself cry. Bucky’s fingers aren’t really pinching anymore, just resting there, just feeling the way he lets himself sometimes, too scared over wherever Steve’s head is at to think better of it. Too used to being ignored when he does something stupid like cup peoples faces to realize he shouldn’t.

“You shouldn’t have -” Steve’s face finally crumples like a tin can, and he starts _leaking_. It’s not full gasping sobs, just quiet little hitches. Ruddy faced and red eyed as tears start coming down, as his nose starts running a little. “It should have been me - God, it should have been me, Buck. I knew from the moment your mam told me - it should have been me, fuck.” His voice is rough and shaky, it hurts to hear.

Steve turns his head and lays a gentle, penitent kiss on Bucky’s palm.

“Haunt me,” Steve gasps out, “it’s what I deserve. God, just seeing you is more’n I -” Bucky thinks maybe he should feel cold, that Steve should be warm when he reaches his living fingers out to grab Bucky’s arm, entreating. Instead his fingers are just as cold as Bucky remembers them always being. The movement jostles his hand on Steve’s face a little. It makes his fingers smear through the hot tears, and _there’s_ the heat.

“Oh Hell - fuck - I shouldn't've - Steve -” Bucky sputters, drags Steve into a hug, the crushing kind that Steve had always been kind of wary of. Except Steve’s clutching back just as hard right now. “No, no, no -”

And it’s easy - the hugging, that is. Easy as picking up pencils and not putting them away. Because there’s no way he could lose himself right now, not when he has to touch, not when he _needs_ to - and it’s not that Steve needs him, not really. But _Bucky_ needs to do it for him - wants to do it the way he’s always wanted to help Steve, even when Steve didn’t want his damn help.

And Steve’s crying those warm tears into his shirt collar, and as soon as Bucky forgets the damp is just _gone -_ so he tries to _remember_ , to keep them. Wants those, too, just like the rest. He feels his own well up, and he knows they’re not real but can’t help them, all the same.

There’s a lot of gibbering, if we’re talking honestly. A lot of incoherent, half spoken apologies on both sides. A lot of clutching and grabbing. Bucky keeps hoping like hell he won’t just - forget himself, won’t leave Steve here like this, or, or - do whatever the hell he does when he _forgets_.

When Steve finally pushes himself away, stops clenching his fingers in Bucky’s shirt, they’ve been huddled on the floor of the kitchen for a while.

Steve meets Bucky’s eyes head on, solemn. His eyebrows are furrowed like he’s sorting out a problem.

“You’re here,” Steve says. Mind made up, Bucky supposes. “Or, if you aren’t, I think it would be worse not to believe you if you _are_ than it would be to talk to myself if I’m going mad,” he adds.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes it out, still feeling a bit choked up. “More or less.”

“Why?”

He’s been trying so hard to get Steve to look at him, he’d almost forgotten how uncomfortable it could be to be under that scrutiny.

“I have no fuckin’ clue,” he admits. Runs a hand through his hair.

~ ~ ~

Bucky comes to him, angry and prying, and not just out of the corner of his eye, or a touch on his shoulder - and Steve feels like his goddamn brain is leaking through his ears. Thinks maybe he’s finally lost it.

There’s Bucky. Dressed in trousers, undershirt, and socks - like he’d just come home and shucked his outer layers, like maybe in a moment they’d listen to a radio play and make fun of the characters together. Except his hair’s too short, his stubble longer than he’d ever let it grow, not with how touchy he was about how fast it came in. His eyes too fucking _tired_.

By the time he’s calmed himself down, he realizes that there are two options. Either he believes or he doesn’t. He can feel Bucky - smell the anxious sweat of him, feel the weave of his shirt warping under Steve’s tight grip.

There’s a part of him that thinks he should go to the hospital, right now. That this isn’t good, can’t be.

There’s a part of him that thinks if he’s got something _real_ wrong, then there probably isn’t a better way to go than sitting here at home, thinking Bucky’s right there with him. A part that’s _real_ okay with the idea that he might be seizing on the floor with something wrong with his head, the way he mam always threatened might happen if he kept taking hits to the head - as long as he gets to have Bucky for one last moment.

But more than all that - because the truth is that Steve knows what it is to clean up after the dead, and would rather not leave that albatross around his land lady’s neck - is this thought: if this _is_ Bucky… if by some chance of luck or spirit or life or death, Bucky is here? There’s no way he can chance not listening to him.

Not that Bucky has anything real _smart_ to say about _how_ he’s here.

“They said you’d - that you were missing.”

Frantically, solutions to the logic problem unfold in his mind - just as strange as what’s happening, maybe, but Hell, _maybe_ Bucky’s just come back. Maybe Steve _does_ have something wrong with him, but it’s just that he’s been overworked and thinking of Bucky. Maybe Bucky came over and snapped him out of it and he’s been alive and -

“Yeah, pretty sure I died,” Bucky says bluntly, rubbing a hand down his face. There’s a wry smile on him that Steve kinda thinks he’d like to smack off.

“Right,” says Steve, fainter than he’d like. He clears his throat and tries for a stronger tone, for something more sure. “So you’re a ghost?”

“More or less,” Bucky repeats himself, and that smug shrug is doing _nothing_ for Steve’s patience.

“What the Hell does that m-“ Bucky covers Steve’s mouth with his hand. Steve licks it, rote habit. The way certain prayers still come to his lips, even years after the last time he set foot in church. It sure as Hell doesn’t taste like he’d imagine a spirit would, whatever that would be - it’s salty dry skin with a bit of metallic tang, a bit of soap.

Bucky just smiles, close mouthed. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

From one moment to the next, Bucky is different. It’s like Steve’s eyes readjust, and suddenly Bucky seems so much younger. The tension is gone and the smile is goofy and disarming. It hurts to look at.

“Gross,” Bucky laughs, rubbing his palm on his trousers.

(The stitching at Bucky’s pants’ pocket hits Steve like a fist to the stomach. Bucky had tucked his thumbs into his pockets all the time when Bucky was sixteen, a kind of affectation - until the seams had started splitting. The first time it had happened, Bucky had asked his mam. But the second time, Bucky had come to Steve, sheepish, and asked for help with a strong, neat stitch. It wasn’t the first time Bucky had had to sew something, but Steve had had a bit more practice with his mam being busy, and helped him make it look respectable, instead of a mess. The pants had been gone for _years_  - they’d gotten too short for Bucky, first, and then when they’d been passed to Steve he’d eventually put holes in the knees. He could still remember the way the seam had felt with the fresh stitches, a ridge under the pad of his finger as he checked the work. The way it had felt years later, fabric fraying under the tight stitches. )

“Hey, I think maybe I don’t wanna go out later, after all,” Bucky is saying, offhand. Steve’s mind reels, trying to fit the needle in the groove. Having a ‘moment’.  “Maybe we could just read a pulp or something?”

It takes him a moment. His cheeks are tight with dried tears, his head is pounding with everything that’s happened.

“Sure,” he says, real soft, “I - I bet I got something.”

And so he spends the night with Bucky - Bucky, who can’t even be eighteen right now, as he flips casually through some old pulps Steve’s kept under his bed - barely reading them, like he always did, just using it as an excuse to sit around talking and asking questions.

At night, Bucky crawls into bed with him like they sometimes did when one of them slept over, when they were small enough - or, Steve supposes with no small amount of age-old irritated resignation, when _Bucky_ was small enough. It’s almost enough to let him make believe that they’ve got a whole ‘nother decade to go before Bucky has to leave. Like maybe they really could just turn back the clock.

He knows Bucky’s just drifting beside him, can tell by the way he rocks his foot the way he always used to do before bed, and Steve fades off long before Bucky does.

~ ~ ~

Getting Bucky back is a mixed bag.

Sure, it’s the first time Steve’s been able to just - _breathe,_ since Maggie came to show him the telegram. But he can’t help but feel like a scabs been ripped off and now something’s bleeding. It had been easier to play numb, before. Now, though…

Sometimes, Bucky remembers almost everything. It’s good - _God_ , it’s good. To have him back, even if he’s tired and miserable and so, so aware of his limitations. But sometimes he doesn’t.

And it’s just as good and just as hard.

Bucky seems to know to some small degree that he’s not always… all the way there.

(“Do the girls know?” Steve asks, the morning after Bucky comes to him. He’d woken up to Bucky half-sitting on the windowsill by his bed, watching him with a tense expression. It lightens when Steve looks directly at him and speaks, but not a whole Hell of a lot.

Bucky looks cagey about the question. “Look, I - no, it’s complicated alright.”

Steve nods, plans already forming in his half awake mind. “Well, I can help convince them, if you can show yourself to them and -“

Bucky looks _real_ shifty, then. “No. I don’t think I should -“ his hands run through his hair. “It’s just - _Irene_ , y’know?”)

Bucky’s obviously a little terrified of himself, but Steve is pretty sure he doesn’t even know the half of it.

(Steve comes home a couple days after the first time, after dropping off some work, and Bucky tugs him down hard by his shirt collar onto the kitchen floor. His eyes are wide as he hunkers with Steve by the wall, tells him to shut up. More than the army kit, more than the bruising grip on his shoulder keeping him low to the ground, it’s honestly the smell that stays with Steve. Sweat and dirt and mud that doesn’t even smell like the mud Steve knows, somehow - and the sweat smells sick, like when Steve stays up too many days in a row on a tight deadline, or when he’s been in his room with a fever. Steve could swear it smells like _fear_ . When he tries to speak, Bucky claps his hand over his mouth, drags Steve to his chest with his other arm. Damn near chokes him on the kitchen floor for an hour, until suddenly he’s just _gone_ and Steve is left sprawled on the floor. It’s the first time Bucky just _goes,_ and Steve spends another couple hours sitting on the couch, terrified he’s dreamed up the last few days. That he _is_ crazy. That he’ll spend the rest of his life hurting for Bucky Barnes, one way or another. But then Bucky’s back, talking as if nothing happened at all, as if he’s just been on the roof poking at pigeons or something. The bruise on Steve’s shoulder remains.)

At least, Bucky always knows him. Always likes him. Steve gets a little wary of the proud way Bucky shows off his ability to touch things. The way he shoves a guy who hassles Steve in the street before looking over at Steve with a childishly hopeful expression, like he’s gonna give him a pat on the back or something. Steve’s not sure if he prefers when he can’t see Bucky; when he can see Bucky but no one _else_ seems to be able to; or when Bucky is so vividly present that people in the street stop for a moment as if their eyes are playing tricks.

It seems to tire him out, being _there_ in a way Steve can see, even as it seems to make it easier the next time.

The first week of knowing Bucky’s _there_ , it’s impossible not to realize how much it really _hasn’t_ all been in his head. Bucky hangs around him pretty much all day, only hanging around the apartment on occasion. He suspects that Bucky prefers to stick around Steve’s place when he’s afraid he’s about to forget himself - can see the way Bucky starts responding strangely to things. Forgetting, from one moment to the next, their conversation. The way he starts getting real shifty and nervous.

The worst part, possibly, is how selfishly glad Steve feels that Bucky is finally back with him. Practically fucking _trapped_ with him, it seems. He knows he should press harder for Bucky to tell at least _Becca_ , but he somehow always backs off. He’s _happy_ that Bucky is there - to talk to, to laugh with, to just share a room with.

(In the back of his head, Steve almost immediately decides to stop looking for a roommate for the extra bedroom. Empty since the last one got drafted. He’s been able to afford the place with all the extra work, so it’s really not a problem. Besides, it’s one thing to warn prospective leasers about the loud pipes, it’s another to tell them the place comes with: a kitchen; a parlor turned bedroom that Steve sleeps in; a bedroom; and a _ghost_. )

~ ~ ~

There are certain things Bucky forgets to bother about because he’s never had to bother about them before.

Sure, Steve doesn’t like being touched all that much, not compared to how casually Bucky touches. Steve had eventually given in on that one over the years, but Bucky had always run the risk of getting his fingers bent back if he tried to sling his arm over Steve’s shoulder while they were fighting.

The first time he loses himself while touching Steve is, in his mind, an event that he doesn’t regret in the slightest. Even if, going forward, he’ll do his best _not_ to repeat it. Even if it _was_ the right thing to do, and _awfully_ heroic in his opinion.

I mean, what’s a guy supposed to do when he’s just walking along with his pal, who’s lungs are twitching more and more, and Bucky _knows_ it, not just ‘cause any damn fool could see Steve’s struggling today ‘cause of the smoke from one of the yards, but because he’s feeling looser in his body today and he can _feel_ it.

So when Steve stops and rests against a wall outside a grocer, fumbling to get out his lighter and an asthma cigarette, and Bucky can _feel_ the swelling inside his throat, can see the flap of flesh that’s just shut up against itself, no matter how much everything else is twitching, trying to get air in, and Bucky can feel his _own_ panic hit him hard -

It’s a moment work to reach inside Steve and push aside the flap, and let the air come pouring in - with maybe a little bit of help. Steve wheezes, a gaping fish expression on his face, and then he stumbles back. Bucky picks up the lighter Steve’s dropped, takes the cigarette from his shaking fingers, lights it, and places it neatly between Steve’s lips. Maaaybe letting himself pull some of the smoke down into Steve’s lungs, the smoke sweeping past irritated flesh - making things ( _vessels, blood, muscles, tension_ ) work both better and worse in a way that’s a lot more upsetting when he can _feel_ the flesh like this.

Steve is pale and leaning heavily on the wall as he smokes, and he’s frowning the entire time. Then he gets real stiff backed and tense and walks home as fast as if he’s got dogs nipping at his heels.  
  
Steve’s got dilated pupils and is weaving a little from the cig when they walk up all the stairs to the sixth floor, biting his lip.

“Don’t ever - _ever_ do that again,” Steve rasps as soon as they’re in the apartment.

Bucky’s maybe a little peeved his noble act is being met like _this_ . “What, save your _life_?”

“You just - _inside me_ , Buck. You can’t just _do_ that, alright?!” Bucky would do it again, if he had to. But Steve looks upset. Real upset.

So Bucky tries to remember these things.

~ ~ ~

Being _there_ so often really outlines some things for Bucky.

Catching on Steve, Bucky can still sleep and eat. Almost. But by himself, trying to sleep just seems to leave him drifting and too close to forgetting.

By himself, he can usually taste food, remember for a moment how hunger had felt, how it had been to be _real_ hungry, over there - but as soon as he forgets for just a moment, he’s either somehow dropped a bit of mashed up food somewhere - or, less embarrassing but somehow worse, he’s somehow left ash under where he was moving.

Bucky doesn’t try to eat, not really. He just lets himself drift on Steve’s half-attention to what he eats.

It’s still better than K-rations.

~ ~ ~

Steve asks only once if Bucky remembers what happened.

Bucky says, “war,” and forgets to give the teasing smile he’d intended to pack along with the word.

It’s funny how many times Bucky used to wish Steve would just _pry_ a little more, when it makes it so easy _now_ to avoid the pitfalls waiting for them both.

And, well. Steve’s always been the kind of guy to retreat when he’s hurt, and so when he sees it hurting Bucky, when he sees Bucky retreating, he just lets go of it. Trusts Bucky to tell him in his own time, the way it always was.

Sometimes Bucky wishes Steve would ask again.

Sometimes the thought burns like wrapping his brain around a hot iron.

~ ~ ~

The truth is that Steve’s seen Bucky lying tense under shackles that are only real to him, reciting the numbers on a dog tag that went missing last year.

The truth is that Steve’s had Bucky curl up to him in the middle of the night, a wisp of a body, half there and half-not, telling him in a quiet, calm voice that he’s glad he died before the guys tried to break out, because as much as everything they did to him had burned, he doesn’t think he would have actually have liked to burn like _that_. Not that he hadn’t seen them toss his body in the furnace, before everything else went up in flames.

The truth is that, no matter how cagey Bucky is about answering questions, sometimes when he forgets himself, he can be _real_ forthright.

~ ~ ~

Two weeks in, Bucky finally picks the scab and asks what Steve meant by “it should’ve been me”.

Steve’s just got half his face scraped raw when he got pushed to the asphalt earlier today. He’s sat at the kitchen table, gingerly attempting to clean it out. It’s hard for Bucky to remember _why_ the guy did it, if he’s honest, the memory’s indistinct and he tries not to worry about it. Steve says the guy was just upset, that Bucky shouldn’t have reached _in_ like he did and given the guy a bruise like that.

(Here’s the truth: it’s easy to look at a guy like Steve Rogers, talking loudly about sterilization and incarceration in California, about American eugenicists and Nazism contributions - easy to think that this little art student’s dodged the fucking draft on a technicality and is just making waves because he can. Bucky hates the way people look at Steve, like he’s a traitor or scum. Wants to shake them, tell them how Steve had spent years frowning at the news, telling Bucky that no matter how many times politicians said it was safer to avoid looking at the problems in Germany and to look inward, that it was going to come to a head. That he’d _known_. Wishes they knew Steve like he did. )

Bucky still can’t help feeling a little proud of the way the swelling had spilled forth on the guy’s cheek, as he watches Steve carefully pick grit and dirt out of the scrape.

Bucky reaches forward and picks the pieces out cleanly trying not to let himself touch Steve as he does, letting the grit just fall away like no real hand could make it. Feels a little smug that it probably doesn’t hurt as bad, what with the way Steve drops his own hand and stops wincing so much.

Steve’s sitting in one of the two chairs in the kitchen, so patient under Bucky’s ministration that it’s easy to pretend this is the way it should have been always - no flinching away or telling Bucky to leave off. Steve’s too soft for Bucky these days, probably, and Bucky knows he should be a little offended that he’s being coddled for being a dead guy, but it makes things easier so he lets it be. Mostly.

“You shouldn’t have done that to him,” Steve says again, soft and barely a remonstration.

Bucky feels his mouth pinch. “Why is it better for some guy to beat on you, then to make him leave off it?”

Steve rolls his eyes, still staying carefully still as Bucky picks at the debris. “‘Cause he was just mad. A lotta people are, right now. I could have taken care of it, there wasn’t any need to -”

“Why you, huh?” Bucky finally asks, and _he_ says it real confrontational like, ‘cause if Steve’s gonna be soft on him he may as well be hard on Steve. “Why did you say it should’ve been you, before?”

Steve’s silent for a long moment, just meeting his eyes. And maybe if he was someone else, he’d pretend he didn’t get it. That he had no clue what Bucky was talking about. Maybe he’d make Bucky drag it out of him, recount the whole conversation.

But Steve says, “it was always supposed to be me.” Succinct and honest, like he’s been waiting for the question since he said it two weeks ago.

And Bucky hates that he gets it. Hates that he knows where this is going. But he pries up the scab anyway. Pretends he doesn’t get it. “What do you mean?” He asks evenly.

Steve glares at him for that, but there’s something more exhausted than angry about it. “You know, Buck. Don’t do this. You know how many times I had to hear doctors tell me I was lucky to last this long? That I probably wouldn’t see thirty?” Steve laughs, but there’s nothing humored in it. “Turns out, all those years I spent telling myself I shouldn’t let you get into trouble for me, that - that I was gonna fuck up your long _illustrious_ life,” Steve’s got a mean look on his face, but Bucky’s wincing because he’s pretty sure Steve’s aiming it at _himself_ . “And turns out _you’re_ the one who didn’t make it to thirty.”

“Jesus, Steve,” Bucky breathes it out, not sure if he’s trying to be reproachful or not.

Steve laughs again, but this time it’s half a sob. It hurts to hear, the way Bucky feels it deep in his own chest, in sympathy.

“It should have been me, because this is _it_ , Bucky,” Steve gesticulates at himself, as if to make Bucky realize what _this_ is - the scraped up face, the empty apartment, the sheet of wood propped on the tub for a kitchen table, the life Steve’s built. “You’ve seen how I been living. This is all I am - if someone was gonna die, it should’ve been me. You would have - Hell, Buck, you would have done so much.”

Steve’s crying again, and there’s something humbling about it. About watching him prop his elbow on the damned sheet-of-wood turned table, hide his eyes with his hand as he tries to keep it together. Bucky feels a quiet sort of - not pride, not for _this_. Gratefulness, maybe - for having meant enough to bring Steve to this place. He still remembers Steve back then, straight backed and determined to deal with the consequences of Sarah’s death all on his own. Now he’s watching him crumple over Bucky Fuckin’ Barnes.

It’s humbling, is all.

He wants to protest, to tell Steve he’s the best person he’s ever known. That if he had all the power in the world, if he could say who lived and died, he always would’ve chosen Steve’s life. ‘Cause Steve may not always be the strongest or the best or - fuck, whatever it is Steve wishes he was so much better at - but he’s always tried the hardest of anyone Bucky’s known. Always been the person to make _Bucky_ the person he most wanted to be.

He knows that’s nothing Steve would listen to, though, so he doesn’t waste the words.

Bucky makes sure his body is there, makes sure he’s not halfway in the table, that he’s kneeling right there beside Steve like he could still bruise his knees on the floor. He cups Steve’s uninjured cheek with his hand, hopes desperately it feels real.

“I’m here,” he says, “it’s okay, I’m here,” and it’s nonsense, but it’s all he can think to say.

Steve smiles, and it’s not a happy one.

“Sure,” he says, casual and easy enough to hurt.

~ ~ ~

A series of small concessions take place.

Steve moves his bed from the parlor room to the bedroom with an actual door, seemingly giving up on the idea of a roommate for good. The parlor, with better light from the windows, is turned fully into his work room. The armchair with three legs (and a crutch of old books with water damage Steve got for free from a neighbor years ago) gets moved around and then put back when it proves to be too awkward to handle, what with how Bucky’s hands keep sleeping through it.

Steve starts saving up, with a half formed idea in his head of what he’s going to do with it.

“We could try to figure it out,” he tells Bucky. “We could find someone, maybe. Science has gotten pretty far, who knows, maybe someone could - ”

Bucky either outright ignores him or just frowns and says, “nah,” to it all every time he brings it up.

But Steve wants to give him the option, so he keeps saving up. Wants to be able to take Bucky anywhere he needs to go, to get whatever answer he needs. He can’t do much, but - Hell, it’s at least _something_ , right?

People talk about laying souls to rest all the time. Maybe it would hurt Steve to lose him again, but if that was what Bucky wanted, there’s no way he wouldn’t fight to get it for him.

He plots and plans and thinks about the right people to ask.

Sometimes he even thinks about the mess of his last 4F. About people with all the answers, about the place where fairytales and science meet. About Dr. Erskine, and what he would ask him if he could.

~ ~ ~

Bucky’s lived on the edges of Steve’s feeling for months, now. Followed him through days filled with an ever-present tension that never seems to leave. It’s funny, he’s always known Steve was stiff lipped about things, always been able to read him better than Steve probably liked. It’s different feeling it, knowing it.

So, Steve waking up sleepy and comfortable - a little stiff-necked from sleeping awkwardly, maybe - and absent-mindedly reaching down to touch himself? Isn’t exactly anything new. Steve tends to adjust his morning wood with a stressed grimace most mornings before moving on, but sometimes he lingers.

Today, he stops his lingering when he notices Bucky sitting on the foot of the bed, head tilted towards him.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Bucky says, trying to sound light and casual and not like he’s feeding off Steve’s comfortable arousal like a real creep. It’s not so much being there while Steve’s tending to himself that makes it feel like a violation - Hell, the two of them had had far more embarrassing conversations and private viewings just by growing up in each other’s pockets. It’s just that feeling it without Steve telling him he can - yeah, he does it a lot, it’s hard to stop himself, sometimes, but it seems kinda. Not on the level.

“Christ, Buck,” Steve mumbles back sleepily, and Bucky can feel how hot it’s getting him, Bucky being right there. How his hand shakes around his half hard dick.

And it’s not exactly a news flash. It’s not like they hadn’t danced around it. Not like Bucky hadn’t know that even though Steve didn’t step out with anyone, he sure didn’t seem to mind eying a guy or a girl every once in a while, didn’t mind visiting the kinda places artistic types are known to frequent. Not like Steve hadn’t put up a wall roughly when he moved in with Bucky, when his mam had died - taking them from the light sort of ‘maybe one day’ kind of dance they’d been doing, to a distinct line of ‘we’re not gonna chance it’. But it strikes Bucky as incredibly unfair, right now. That he’d never challenged the withdrawal, that he’d almost been grateful that he’d stopped feeling so scared and excited about it finally happening. That they’d never gotten to have that, along with everything else.

“You liked me,” Bucky accuses, lost in the argument in his own head. Because he can and because he’s maybe a little bitter.

Steve grimaces, withdraws his hand from his shorts, from the sheets entirely. Resting both his hands real innocent like on top of them. And the guilty feeling isn’t what Bucky had in mind at _all_.

“Shit, I mean -” he sighs, “- I should have done something about it when I still could have,” he explains, and it’s more self pitying than he’d thought it would sound. He winces at it, just hearing it.

Steve gets a sad look on him, and even though he’s still sleep-gruff, he makes a valiant attempt to sound confident and on top of the conversation. “I wouldn’t have let you. S’not your fault. I always thought if I let us, that I’d just - that it’d mess things up for you. So, I just made sure we didn’t.” Steve shrugs.

“That’s really not fair,” Bucky says, still feeling sorry for himself. “Should’ve asked me, I would’ve - we could’ve - ”

Steve interrupts him with that croaky gravel voice, “- you would’ve gotten in trouble with me just like everything else you ever followed me into. That was a kind of trouble it was easy to avoid, so I made sure we did. Buck, I wouldn’t give up everything we got to do together for the world,” Steve says, so easily sincere in that way that takes Bucky aback sometimes. “I love you, you know that, yeah? Brother, friend, guy I love. It all amounts to the same thing.” Steve’s voice is even, and he _is_ being honest. Bucky knows that, can feel it. But he also can feel how sad Steve is, how much empty loss there is, how much hurt there is still over the decision.

“Hey, c’mere,” and Steve’s pulling aside the sheets, so Bucky climbs in with him. Gets a kiss on the nose before Steve pulls him in so he’s tucked under his chin, left arm flopped over Steve’s chest. Bucky can feel his body being unruly today, knows Steve can feel it, too. The way the tension of his skin isn’t quite right, the way he keeps bleeding into Steve a little.

“You wanna feel it?” Steve asks, traces his right fingertips down Bucky’s arm before he tucks his hand under his shorts again and adjusts himself.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, closing his eyes and feeling the heat of it all, the excitement. He also feels incredibly fucking _sad_ , and he’s not sure if it’s him, or Steve bleeding into him, or the both of them feeling the loss of everything they never got to be. The people they could have been for each other.

Steve brings himself off like that, lazily and slowly, lets Bucky sink into the way he feels it. It’s not what would have happened if Bucky’d ever had the nerve to reach down from his bed, where Steve had slept on the couch cushions for two fucking years, and gotten them into a good kind of trouble. It’s not fumbling with fear of someone finding out.

But it’s not any less precious for it. Not any less good to let himself feel Steve, feel the tiredness in his bones, the heat in his skin, the fondness for Bucky as he rests his chin in hair that isn’t quite all-there.

~ ~ ~

A lot can happen in a year and change.

A man can turn 26, for one thing.

Bucky jeers and calls Steve an old fogey, pesters him in the week prior to make sure he gets himself some small fireworks to light on the rooftop with the neighbors. Makes sure he gets himself something good for dinner (a simple meat pie, but the meat didn’t come from a can and there’s fresh peas in there and it’s all pretty mouthwatering, even to Bucky).

Steve looks morose all day, fighting to keep up a good smile. It’s only when he’s had a bit of whiskey late into the night, when the fireworks have all died down, that he brings up that he’s the same age as Bucky, now. That if he makes it another year he’ll be older. That when he thought about it, he’d always assumed he’d be the one to go first. That he’d never make it _further_ than Bucky.

Bucky, with the smoothness of someone who’d had two parents frequently at the bottle, and who had been _very_ well liked at social gatherings, shifts Steve to brighter subjects immediately. But it hangs on his mind, the way Steve talks so casually about his own mortality.

The idea of Steve dying is almost worse, like this. Because all he can imagine facing him after that would be wandering the Earth endlessly, alone and forgetting himself, more and more. Unable to go, but unable to _be_ . So, no - Steve isn’t allowed to die. Not yet. Not soon. Not _ever_ , preferably, but even Bucky knows a hopeless cause when he sees one - even if he’s spent most of his life hanging around one of his own volition.

In the same span of time, a war can be won.

Steve doesn’t do anything like cheer on V-E-Day, just listens to the wireless intently as people talk in excited voices. Just takes a very deep breath and nods, just takes in all the information he can get his hands on and ignores the fervor. Bucky isn’t exactly sure how he feels, feels a sort of numbness about it. He knows he should be glad, but it’s a distant, theoretical kind of thing.

On August 15th Japan surrenders. The nation celebrates. Nothing about Steve reads as relief, to Bucky. He supposes he doesn’t feel it either. There’s still so much to do. But, there’s something lighter about Steve. He’s still fighting over things no one wants to listen to him about, still making noises about all the vets who get turned away from getting what they deserve from Serviceman’s Readjustment Act for the color of their skin, still talking about the girls in the WAC getting what they earned, still talking about a number of things Steve can’t possibly do shit about.

Still, when the damn thing gets signed in September, they get a bottle of whiskey and sitting cross legged together on Steve’s bed, listening to the announcement.

Bucky takes an absentminded swig at one point, feeling hazy off the bleed of Steve’s tipsiness. He immediately makes a face, cups a hand around the back of Steve’s head, leans over and gets Steve to take the mouthful - it’s not graceful, and a fair amount just dribbles out. But after he swallows, Steve laughs as he leans back against Bucky’s hand, making a mock-disgusted face through his smile.

“Disgusting,” he says, not a spec of vitriol. After a moment, his exaggerated expression falls, and the smile droops a bit. He looks Bucky in the eye, and there’s something near tears there.

“What?” Bucky asks, skritches the tips of his fingers in Steve’s head so it bounces slightly on his palm.

“Nothin’,” Steve says immediately, then, “I was scared you’d be gone after it was done.”

Bucky isn’t sure what to think. Whether he should have been hoping for the same thing, for release the way they always talk about it with trapped spirits in stories - or, whether he should have been dreading this.

Honestly, he doesn’t really feel much but a bit of relief. A lot of worry for what comes next, for Steve, for the world, for himself -

But for now -

“I mean, I know not all the troops have come back,” Steve babbles, staring in concern at the ceiling. “But it’s over, mostly. In theory.”

\- for _now_ , “I’m glad I’m not gone,” Bucky admits.

Steve smiles at the ceiling, and it’s not an uncomplicated thing. He’s worried, he’s scared, he’s still trying to work out a plan, some way to make things _right -_

But it’s a real smile, at any rate.

Steve is rolling his head back against Bucky’s hand with his neck still craned back, just sort of feeling the motion, the buzz from the liquor.

Bucky drags him in again and rests his forehead on Steve’s. He knows sometimes he forgets things, Steve’s told him about the things he does when he drifts -

Steve’s eyelashes on Bucky’s cheeks, the red to his face, the sweat on his neck, the half-smile tensing his cheek against Bucky’s, the way his nose hits against Bucky’s. It’s nothing he hasn’t felt in the last couple years, Hell, probably nothing he hasn’t felt in the years before. But the idea of losing it, in this moment... it’s not great.

He wants to keep this one if he can.

* * *

 

  
1  
With all the jobs being left empty by soldiers going overseas, the Work Projects Administration can’t survive. Somewhat more inevitable had been the WPA’s Federal Art Project’s dissolution, considering the constant controversy since the damn thing’s conception. No matter what people say about the disorganization of the FAP - and Steve still isn’t dead certain half the comments aren’t just snide politics - Steve will never stop loving the absurd times he spent getting tossed from project to project. Teaching kids and adults who’d never held a paintbrush in their lives; painting murals at the corner post office with a gaggle of out of work artists; illustrating public service posters for the Department of Health. With his work with Victor Records for their covers gone because of the Musicians’ Strike, and now with the WPA gone - he should be terrified about the empty room left by Arnie (off in the Pacific, letters tapering more and more), he should be concerned about the bills. A couple years ago, he would’ve been. More work keeps coming in.  
[return to text]

2Brooklyn’s coal being cut with trash seems to be all the local rags can talk about aside from, well… Steve ends up giving some of his own to Joan next door, because he can’t stand the worried, teary eyed look she gets when she can’t get the damned stuff to light and asks him to come over to help her. He can practically hear her seventy year old bones grinding themselves away as she stands there watching him, fretting. It’s almost vaudevillian, a scandal about coal getting cut with rubbish while the neighborhood freezes. If Bucky were here, they’d joke about how it was another reason to hate Jersey, they’d mock spit at the ground at the name. It’s only late November and it’s just going to get colder, the day he helps Joan. Steve writes a letter that night, and draws a mountain of coal piling up in New Jersey, hopes Bucky laughs a little at the melodramatic picture of Joan swooning at Steve’s aid with the stove.  
[return to text]

3He’s not fighting for the jobs anymore. The studio heads look happy to see him. He starts seeing more and more girls from his school days coming through the studios - a couple years ago it would be a victory, he’d be congratulating them. He runs into a girl he used to have figure drawing classes with, and they visit an automat together. Once upon a time she’d snuck him into the Howdy Club with her girlfriend, and kept telling anyone who’d listen about what a darling budding “boy” he was with a sly wink. He’d been unsure whether to give thanks to the power of suggestion, or a little irritated that he was apparently less manly than the Errol Flynn lookalike that he was pretty sure had been the girl who’d walked in wearing stockings a half hour ago. He’d been less upset after he himself had half-started to swoon over Flynn, an hour and several drinks in.

He tells Lauren she’ll be great at this kind of ad work - she’s always been quick, always been good at making the kind of appealing illustrations that draw the eye in, even in newspaper black and white. It’s a dreamlike feeling, being in the automat. Lauren isn’t laughing and clever or messy and drunk or chewing her lip over an illustration in concentration, she’s just kind of quiet and tired looking. After a while, she mentions, abrupt like a confession, that her brother was KIA a few months ago.

For a split second, Steve considers not saying anything, just giving his condolences. But the future stretches out in front of him, a long series of conversations he’ll spend, dreading the moment someone asks what’s happened to his old buddy, the guy he was always hanging around.

He tells her about Bucky. For just a moment, Lauren reaches out and holds his hand beside their cold steak and eggs. After that, he sees her sometimes around the studios. They smile at each other, but they don’t get lunch again. A few months later, he hears through the grapevine that she’s joined the WAC.  
[return to text]

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! I had a blast writing this!! I hope the characterizations worked for you, and that you enjoyed. : ) Again, the lovely art of this fic is by [steve-rogers](http://steve-rogers.tumblr.com/). If you wanna drop the author a message, you can reach me on my personal tumblr at [linguastrata](http://linguastrata.tumblr.com/), or on my writing blog [fowlprose](http://fowlprose.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Actually, I ended up with some plotlines that just couldn't be added to the story without making the tone super jumbled. So, if you noticed any Chekov's guns lying around, and you're curious about the logistics of what happened in this fic, I'm gonna be putting out a sequel in the next month or so to solve some of the mysteries re: Steve's final 4F, Bucky and his family, how Bucky made it back, and what happens next.
> 
> As always, concrit is always appreciated. : ) Even just telling me how you interpreted a paragraph - good or bad - is incredibly helpful for me, and for improving my writing!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Long Slog -- art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11076843) by [moblit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moblit/pseuds/moblit)




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